If you’re single, the pact of “single friends like you” is a club that seems to get smaller and smaller the older you get. It’s easy to feel like you’re running out of people to hang out with when all your besties now come as a packaged deal. But you don’t have to miss out on the fun, much less your friends’ lives, just because you can’t contribute in a double date. Here are five reasons being the third wheel doesn’t have to be a bad thing:

Local churches are intended to be the incubator for future marriages, not online dating sites and hookup apps. Can God use the common grace of online matchmaking? Absolutely. Is it best? I would argue no. No matter how perfectly crafted our online dating profiles, how strategic our selfies, or how appealing we can make ourselves sound, these sites cannot replace the efforts of those who know and love us in helping us find a spouse.

This year has been the best of times and the worst of times. Yet through it all, God has been faithful to his promise––to continue to conform me into the image of Jesus. Over the holidays, I’ve spent time reflecting, and I want to share 14 insights I had for the new year as God continues to shape us all into the image of his son. My most important ministry is not what I do for Jesus but receiving what Jesus has done for me. My second most important ministry is to love my wife.

Sin is the true and obvious answer. That said, there are peculiar sins that teenagers, at least in our day, are somewhat prone to. Just as with adults, however, I’m afraid we mass our defenses in all the wrong places. The sins of our youth are just like the sins of our dotage, though they may present themselves in somewhat different ways. The key sin I am on the lookout for with my teenagers is the one I’m on the lookout for in me—pride.

How we speak -- to others and to ourselves -- has a huge impact on our overall outlook. So isn't it about time we started paying more attention to what we're communicating? Here are 15 phrases that will transform the way you think, feel and act in the coming year. Using your words to change your life? Now that's a resolution worth keeping.

“If anything, adoption exposes evangelicals’ weaknesses as well as strengths,” said Russell Moore, who is white and adopted two white children from Russia. “In any given month, I’m dealing with a couple adopting a child of another race dealing with relatives who object, sometimes in nakedly racist terms.” Adoption has forced evangelicals to reconsider all manner of issues, from poverty to race to health and international relations, Moore said.

Coming out is a scary experience. If your loved one is just beginning to step out of the closet, it has probably taken years to build up to telling you. Honor and respect that. You may be filled with many conflicting emotions — there will be plenty of time to work through those later on in your relationship. For now, hold your loved one close, affirm your love, enter into conversation, and stay in touch. Your relationship has the potential to be so much deeper because of this vulnerability.

I know, I know. Millennials have been written to death. But I’m going to make like the millennial I am and say it’s my duty, as the voice of my generation (a voice of a generation?), to proclaim: You don’t hate millennials; you hate the 21st century.

In their new book, You and Me Forever: Marriage in Light of Eternity, Francis and Lisa Chan set out to reframe the entire way we think about relationships, marriage, and parenting. The marriage union is great, they observe, but it’s not forever. Therefore, we must approach this sacred relationship from the zoomed-out vantage point of eternity. And when we do, it changes everything.

For most professionals, the use of words like “Uh,” “Um” and “So…” can easily get out of control if we’re not conscious of them. These innocent-seeming filler words aren’t an issue when they’re said once or twice in a meeting (in which case they can actually make a person seem more considered), it’s their repetitive use that really kills a person’s credibility.